Weakness
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Missing scene for the finale. Dolf may have had Winnie tied up, but her beak was still free ...


Weakness

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _Alfred J. Kwak_

Copyright: Herman van Veen

Winnie Wana was not brave. She had known this ever since she had pleaded with her parents not to leave her behind in Great Waterland, because their safety mattered so much to her than their mission. She had known it every time she paced the floor or a ship's deck, worrying, while Alfred was off exploring space, talking to dragons, curing diseases or leading political movements. She had the misfortune of being a quiet, domestic duck surrounded by heroes. It had never troubled her so much as now.

"You do realize that if you lay one feather on me, Alfred will make you wish you'd never been born?"

Dolf croaked a scornful laugh, and Winnie blushed. Her defiance wasn't fooling him. She was tied to a chair, in a small hut in the middle of the forest; he could do anything he wanted with her. Judging by the glint in his beady black eyes, he knew that very well.

"Don't flatter yourself, Miss Wana. I find water birds repulsive in general, and brown ones in particular. Although I might just tell Alfred I took advantage of you, if only to see his face."

Winnie glared. Anger was a welcome alternative to fear, if only because it made her feel less weak. Thinking of the hopeless chase through the desert on which Dolf had sent Alfred made her see red; waterless places were a nightmare to him, even more than to most ducks. She strained futilely against the ropes. Violence had never been in her nature, but right now, she would give anything for a better weapon than words.

Still, she reflected, words were better than nothing.

"Don't be ridiculous," she hissed. "Your feathers are darker than mine!"

"I'm a crow. That's different. We're supposed to be dark." Dolf adjusted his tie in a nearby mirror, smirking at his own black face.

"Oh, really?"

He swung around. "What's that supposed to mean?"

An anecdote of Henk's, told around the dinner table with much laughter and indignation, came to her aid. The family's preoccupation with Dolf's history may have annoyed her at the time, but right now, she was grateful; there was nothing like knowing your enemy's weaknesses. She lifted her head up as high as it could go.

"Are you a real crow, Dolf? Because I've heard differently."

Dolf froze in his tracks. She had the suspicion that, if not for the color of his feathers, he would have been turning pale.

"What is it you're using? Shoe polish? It never works, you know. I had a friend back home who used to bleach her feathers, but she still couldn't pass for a goose – "

_Crack!_

Winnie's head snapped sideways as Dolf slapped her across the face. It hurt, but it was deeply satisfying, because she knew now what she had suspected all along – that if she was a coward, so was her captor.

"Alfred betrayed me," Dolf rasped, standing over her. His wing was still raised, but his eyes were unfocused, and his breathing heavier than one slap should warrant. "He promised … "

He lowered his wing, passed it over his face and turned away.

In that moment, shockingly, he reminded her of Alfred. Regret was not a common word in her happy-go-lucky lover's vocabulary, but when he spoke of Dolf, it tended to creep up on him. _I knew he had problems, even when we were chicks, but I was too little to realize what it all meant. He made me promise …_

"He didn't tell me anything," Winnie told him truthfully. "Everybody knows who your parents were. He wishes he _had_ told someone. They might have helped you."

"_Helped _me?" Dolf snarled with redoubled venom. "I never needed help! I escaped from that sinkhole I was hatched in and made my fortune all by myself! Is that what Kwak told you, that he wanted to help me? Did he tell you that when I started my first campaign for presidency, I asked for his support and he laughed in my face? Did he tell you that when we were chicks, he attacked me and left me to die at the bottom of a well?"

"He told me how he and his father risked their lives to save you, and how you went on to become a fascist dictator who had him imprisoned without a charge."

"The charge was insubordination. He was casting doubts on my mental health!"

"Clearly he was right."

Dolf pounced on her so quickly, for a moment she thought he would peck her eyes out with his crooked beak. He tipped back her chair so far it threatened to fall backwards, staring at her with the eyes of a mad bird. She fought the urge to close her eyes.

"Everything I've ever done has been for the good of my country and for my own protection," he croaked. "I don't expect your precious Alfred to understand, naïve as he always was, but you should. You of all creatures, Winnie Wana," he tugged on one of her kinky black curls, "Should know by now how cruel the world can be to those who are different."

She remembered: her father's sad, wise face behind prison bars; her mother hurrying along the sidewalk with a bent head as white geese shouted crude jokes from their Porsche; Tom coming home with a black eye or a broken wing; Wannes' sneer as he refused to sit next to her, already plotting their arrest. If _this_ was what Dolf had been trying to avoid, how much of the blame was really his and how much their society's?

Then she thought of his sickening triumph as he imagined Alfred dying in the desert, and her heart hardened. If there had ever been a chance of reaching out to Dolf, it was long gone.

"I do know," Winnie replied, "And I also know that what you would have faced as a hybrid in a country like Great Waterland is nothing compared to what my people suffer. I'm as angry about that injustice as you are about yours, Dolf, every single day. I hate the white geese for what they've done, and so does Alfred. But you don't see us taking it out on innocent bystanders, do you?"

Another slap, on the opposite cheek this time, made her eyes water and her neck scream with whiplash. But she wasn't afraid anymore.

"No matter what you do to Alfred," she said, "He'll always be stronger than you could possibly be."

_And so will I._


End file.
